👋Hello Nimbus Community,

Anyone familiar with social media knows about profile pictures and how important that first impression can be. With NFTs being used increasingly as profile pictures, it’s a good time to look deeper into this popular term: ✨PFP✨

What is PFP?

PFP is an acronym used in social media, meaning ‘Profile Picture’ or ‘Picture for Proof.’ It represents the image a person uses for their social media accounts, making it easier to link their online activity to a particular profile.

With NFTs becoming a phenomenon, it’s not surprising using them as profile pictures has become a hot trend. Hence the new term PFP NFT – profile picture non-fungible tokens (sometimes abbreviated PFPs).

The inspiration

Using NFTs as profile pictures or digital avatars started from CryptoPunks and their unique characters linked to crypto tokens to prove ownership. After that, people started using various NFTs as PFPs for their social media accounts. 

When Twitter offered the possibility to verify if the NFT used as a profile picture is actually owned by the user, the relation between NFTs and social media became even tighter. Celebrities and influencers started displaying their NFT collections on their accounts, and even regular users began to show off their newly acquired NFTs to get new followers.

Top success

The Bored Ape Yacht Club collection is still the most popular example of PFP NFTs. The fun apes took on immediately, and sometimes you even got particular perks along with owning the NFT. Celebrities like Eminem, Timbaland, or Neymar Jr using their Bored Ape NFTs as Twitter profile pictures pushed the trend even further.

Using NFTs as literal profile pictures on Twitter and other social media platforms is undoubtedly an easy and popular way to display your NFTs and boast about ownership. After all, if you spent the money on that ape, for example, you want to show it off.